Partners Praise New Citrix CEO As Proven Channel Advocate

Pages

While partners were caught off-guard with this week's leadership shakeup at Citrix Systems, several told CRN any concerns of disruption were eased by the selection of David Henshall as the new CEO.

In elevating Henshall, the board of directors gave a ringing endorsement of maintaining Citrix' unique corporate culture at a time of tremendous product and channel transformation for the cloud era, they told CRN.

Partners view Henshall, who will replace Kirill Tatarinov at the helm of the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based virtualization vendor, as a trusted old-guard executive with close ties to the company's channel.

"We've always appreciated the work he has done," said Paul Kunze, vice president of sales and marketing at IntraSystems, a Citrix partner based in Braintree, Mass. "He's been involved with partners for many, many years, so I think this will be positive for us. He's been there so long, understands the commitment the channel has to them, the commitment they have to the channel. Glad to see he's been given the role."

"No one saw that change coming," said Nancy Pautsch, president of Envision IT, a partner based in Madison, Wis. "But Dave [Henshall] has been there as long as he has and in his previous capacity knows a lot about Citrix so that puts a lot of people at ease.

"They're bringing veterans in that seem to know the ins-and-outs," she added.

"He's pragmatic and understands the business of selling Citrix," said Carl Gersh, who worked with Henshall both as a Citrix employee and later in his current role of director of sales and marketing for Forthright Technology Partners, a Citrix partner based in Miramar, Fla.

Coupled with Craig Stilwell's ascension to channel chief at the end of last year, Citrix' channel organization is led by "some people who understand how we're going to make money selling Citrix," Gersh said. "Bringing in an outsider would have been very challenging with the path Citrix is on with Citrix Cloud."

Citrix Cloud, a hybrid cloud solution, was introduced before outgoing CEO Kirill Tatarinov's tenure, but advanced as a product during the year-and-a-half Tatarinov led the company.

"If we were going to get an outside CEO, it would have potentially called into question what their strategy was, and I think they have the right strategy," Gersh told CRN. Citrix Cloud is proving a "good business for Citrix, Citrix partners, and makes a lot of sense for Citrix customers."

Twenty of the publicly held channel companies on our watch list saw the price of their stock increase in the third quarter of 2017 while only six recorded stock price declines. See who was up and who was down in the third quarter of 2017.